Unauthorized Access
by Ysabet
Summary: The Fenton Portal, Sam, and Danny, Jack's son. A certain Stargate, Sam and Daniel Jackson. Anybody else here see a similarity? When portals and alien technology mix, things can get very, very weird... Chapter 4 posted Aug 7 2007
1. Where No Dead Man Has Gone Before

_Sigh… The following is the result of watching far, far too much Danny Phantom over the last two weeks. For the record, I blame Icka._

_**Unauthorized Access**_

**_Chapter One: Going Where No (Dead) Man Has Gone Before_**

"Another day, another dollar…" The white-haired halfa sighed as he sucked one more shrieking spirit into his Fenton Thermos. "At least," he muttered as he screwed the cap down tight, "it would be if I got paid for all this. Maybe I should start looking at the Want Ads-- Yeah; _'Wanted, part-time exorcist for night shift—'_"

From behind the nearest tree a Sam-flavored voice answered him sardonically. "Don't quit your day job, Danny."

"Gee, _thanks,_ Sam. 'Course, if I _had_ a day job, that'd make a lot more sense. Be right back, okay?" With a flourish he rose into the air, then paused and blinked green eyes. "Hey, where's Tucker?"

"……………………..…….."

And _that_ was a Tucker-flavored silence, coming from beneath a park bench. "Is it gone? Are we safe yet?" said a small voice. It hadn't helped Tucker's personal equilibrium that this particular ghost had had a thing for possessing PDAs and other computer equipment; Casper High's resident techno-geek would probably spend the rest of the evening hiding beneath his bed, whimpering to himself and cuddling his hardware.

Beneath his arm, the thermos let out an angry crackle; with a sigh, Danny waved at Sam and headed wearily for home.

"—Get—_nngh!_—IN—_rrrgh!!—_there, you slimy green—" The specter that had dubbed itself the 'UNIVACosaur' for reasons unknown to Danny was being tricky; pitch-black and seemingly made up of nothing more than a viridian-edged, gaping hole equipped with tentacles, dinosaur-like roars and claws, the spirit had managed not only to short-circuit the Thermos but to spread-eagle itself across the Portal. _And_ the damned thing had displayed a talent for making machinery break down in the most bizarre ways—the aforementioned route to the Ghost Zone was crackling, spitting sparks and livid green lighting across the basement as Danny scrabbled for a hold. "Dammit, get in there and stop—aagh!—being—such a—goddamned _baby_ about this—"

As he gave the spirit a final hard shove, it howled and latched onto him with a glowing tentacle ("AAACK!!"); triumphant claws ripped at controls and the Portal's swirl of energies seemed to warp, to twist violently and then to _change color— _

With one wild look at the silver shimmer that had taken the place of the familiar green whirlpool, Danny phased intangible, hoping it would help.

It didn't.

The Portal _sucked._ Vacuum dragged impossibly at his wraithlike form and at the far more tangible creature wrapped around him; it howled, raking talons across the silvery surface, which rippled, billowed, and—

"**Oh_shii—"_**

--engulfed them both in a waterfall of ice…

… before falling back quiescent and still. And once more quite, quite green.

Not that there was anybody around now to notice.

* * *

WHOOSH!!!

"**_--iiitYEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!!"_**

WHOOSH!!!

* * *

"_BWEEP! BWEEP! Unauthorized activation," _advised the too-complacent mechanized voice over the intercom. _"Incoming travelers—"_

The scientist stumbled out of his lab, caffeine-bleary blue eyes alarmed. Perimeter-alarms, military or otherwise, were just too damned _loud._ "What's an archaeologist have to do around here to enjoy a quiet cup of coffee?" he asked the swearing Major coming up on his left; the blonde woman rolled her eyes, checking her weapon, but forbore to answer. The two instead thudded down the corridor towards the control room as quickly as possible, expecting trouble.

What they got was… something rather different…

* * *

WHOOSH!!!

_Thud._

Huddled in a ball on cold metal and once more very much corporeal, Danny moaned. _OhGodOhGodOhGodOh… Whatever that was, it was NOT anything I've ever seen in the Ghost Zone before. Think I'm gonna hurl. Can halfas hurl? Betcha I find out in just a--_

The all too familiar sound of way, way too many weapons clicking off their safeties made Danny look up from his fetal curl of a crouch. _Oooh. LOTS of guns. Hellooooo, U.S. Military! _He attempted to focus, blinking white hair out of eyes that only now felt like they were setting into their normal shape after being folded, spindled and mutilated by his trip through—

What _had_ happened to him, anyway? Where the hell _was_ he? This damn sure wasn't the Ghost Zone, unless they had gone Government Subsidy Grey…

A quick glance over his shoulder made his jaw drop. It _was_ a Portal behind him, clear enough, sort of funky-looking but the right shape and all, and yet—since when was the entrance to the Ghost Zone covered with a, a—um… He wasn't sure just _what_ that segmented metal thing was, but he was pretty sure that the 'thud' he had heard had been UNIVACosaur kersplatting against the other side. Eww. "I don't think we're in Kansas anymore, Toto," Danny muttered.

"Actually," said the lanky man with the Colonel's insignia at the front of the soldiers, "you're in Colorado…" He raised an eyebrow at the shaky white-haired teenager. "Y'know, though, you look a little short to be a Goa'uld."

Danny slowly climbed to his feet. "And you look a little solid for a ghost…" He blinked. "'Goa'uld'?"

"'Ghost'?"

"Uh—" They both stared at each other, scowling identical scowls. Around them, the soldiers watched with bemused eyes.

And up in the control room, Daniel Jackson sighed and got ready to do what he did best—intervene before someone did something painful and/or stupid. "Archaeologist? _Who's_ an archaeologist?" the blond muttered to himself. "I should start hiring out as a professional babysitter, or a hostage negotiator, or, or—"

"Don't quit your day job, Danny," advised Major Samantha Carter as she checked the ammo in her rifle.

"Gee, _thanks,_ Sam."

* * *

_To be continued..._

_(…and do NOT tell me that I'm the only person who noticed that both Stargate and DP have a Daniel and a Sam as main characters. Hell, Icka pointed out that you have 'Daniel Jack's son' in both of 'em! Ysabet awards Icka the Internet C'mon, hasn't anybody else written a crossover? Portal, Danny, Sam; Stargate, Danny, Sam. Helloooooo…)_


	2. Take Me To Your Leader

_**Unauthorized Access**_

_**Chapter Two: Take Me To Your Leader**_

"Coffee?" Daniel Jackson cocked his head to one side, staring at his very unusual visitor. "You drink coffee? _Ghosts_ drink coffee?"

"Daniel," said the blonde woman beside him very patiently, "he's not a ghost. Ghosts do not exist, therefore he can't be a ghost, and therefore—"

The thin red coffee-stir that Danny had just used slid through fingers that had abruptly gone immaterial. "Sorry; that happens sometimes if I don't concentrate," he said apologetically, picking it up from the floor and laying it on the table between them. The dark-haired woman who was currently hooking up a blood-pressure cuff to his arm grunted in annoyance, and he obediently settled himself down into the uncomfortable metal chair. "Sorry," he said again, vowing to watch her for any signs of syringes and needles; she had that look about her.

Major Carter continued on stubbornly without missing a beat. "—therefore he has to be something else—an alien, some sort of mutation, an android, a Goa'uld trick, an ambulatory plant, a—"

Their white-haired visitor eyed them both over the rim of his mug. "What? 'Ghost' isn't weird enough for you, so I have to be a bug-eyed monster instead? And would somebody please tell me _what_ on Earth a 'Goa'uld' is?"

"Nothing you'd want to meet," commented the dark-haired medical woman as she put away the cuff and produced a penlight; her name-badge read _FRASIER._ "Stick out your tongue and say 'ahh'—"

"Wfgl--? Aaaahh—"

"Take a deep breath; fine, now cough. How much do you weigh?"

The tongue-depressor vanished into a waste-can but the penlight remained out as Doctor (?) Frasier began peering into his ears, up his nose and into his eyes. Danny winced. "Do you mean when I'm solid or when I'm not?" The woman blinked, frowned, and wrote something unseen down on her notepad.

They had adjourned to one of SG1's secure facilities—not quite a cell, not quite a board room—for something that Danny was uneasily aware hinted at interrogation, i.e., Tell Us What We Want To Know And Nobody Will Get Hurt. The military types were calling it an 'exchange of information'. For someone who had been raised around heavy technology, the large guns and imposing ranks of machinery everywhere wasn't particularly intimidating; no, what _was_ intimidating was the extremely large guy with the funky gold tattoo on his forehead. He was currently glowering from one corner, arms crossed and dark eyes unblinking, reminding Danny of nothing so much as a humongous Doberman Pincher with a taste for halfas. He hadn't said anything as yet; could he even talk?

So far the interrogation—that is, the 'exchange'—had mostly consisted of Danny-Being-Questioned, Danny-Being-Prodded-After-He-Accidentally-Went-Invisible, and Danny-Watching-Doctor-Jackson-Light-Up-Like-A-Freaking-Christmas-Tree. The guy was _intense._ You'd think that he'd never seen a ghost before… Maybe the military had a 'don't ask, don't tell' policy about the supernatural too? Who knew?

(The 'Going-Invisible' thing had been an accident, almost. 'So, you claim you're a ghost? Why should we believe you?' Fwoosh, invisibile. '…Pretty convincing argument, I have to admit. Are you still there?' Fwoosh, visible. He hadn't exactly _meant_ to do it, but some things were sort of instinctual at this point. Apparently his sense of snark had developed a life of its own.)

And now Jackson was watching him drink his coffee, blue eyes bright with enthusiasm. "If you're a ghost, and yes, I _know,_ Sam, ghosts aren't officially recognized by the U.S. Military yet even though Congress passed the Extranormal Protections Act two years ago—Uh; where was I? Oh, right… If you're a ghost, how can you drink coffee? I mean, where does it go?"

"…no such _thing_ as ghosts…" Major Carter was still muttering to herself. In the corner, Tall-Dark-And-Glaring narrowed his eyes, and the scary woman with the penlight attempted vainly to find Danny's pulse (he _did_ actually have one, just not all of the time.)

"…I mean, it's not my field, but according to _Tobin's Spirit Guide_ most ectoplasmic entities can't consume physical-plane-derived foods, right? Wrong energy signature, and—" He paused, eyeing his own mug as if expecting it to begin glowing, and then shrugged and drained the lot. "Are you able to adjust your signature?"

"Only when I need a report-card signed," muttered Danny beneath his breath. "Um, sort of," he hedged a bit louder; "It goes along with being intangible—when I want to be affected, I am, and when I don't want to be, I'm, um, not…" and he watched the doctor light up all over again. There were notes being taken, lots of them, and a tape-recorder going too. So far the halfa had held his own against the huge, glowing force of the other's friendly fascination but he could feel his defenses slowly crumbling. It was like the guy had _'OPEN UP, YOU CAN TRUST ME'_ printed in huge letters all over his forehead, and the teenager wondered if Jackson emitted some sort of paranormal _I'm-harmless,-really_ rays or something.

No, wait, that was silly—

And then Danny considered the portal that he had exited, the blonde woman's comments about aliens, androids and ambient plants, the exotic weaponry everywhere, and the fact that before they had clammed up he had been asked _which star-system he had come from_…

Riiiiiiiiight.

The white-haired halfa looked suspiciously down at _his_ coffee as well, then shrugged and finished the cup. "I wonder if I should start drinking decaf?" he said out loud, staring into the empty cup.

A hand came down on his shoulder. "Oh, you don't want to do that," said a laconic voice from behind him. "At least you're drinking the good stuff; you don't wanna know what the decaf around here tastes li—_holy _shit—"

Yelping and dropping the coffeecup had not been very bright. Falling butt-first through the chair onto the floor when being loomed over by the looney with the biggest gun, now _that_ had seemed like a good idea at the time. Sinking halfway through the floor, though… that got him several guns and a weird sort of stick-shaped weapon pointed his way, and Danny froze where he was, ass-deep in carpeted concrete and with his head poking through the metal seat of the folding-chair.

The looney stared down at him, eyebrows climbing; one breath, two, and the stick-weapon was beginning to make a weird sort of _vwiiiiiiiiiimm_ noise-- "Need a hand up?" said the looney.

"……….." said the halfa, accepting the hand up and proving for all present to see that ghosts can indeed turn red. Danny hated freaking out; he felt like such a loser when he went through things without meaning to. "Thanks. So—stay away from the decaf?" he asked, doing his best to recover his aplomb.

The looney (and _his_ nametag proclaimed him to be 'O'Neill') chuckled. "This is a military base; anything decaf tastes like crankcase oil-- _diet_ crankcase oil. You got enough of the good stuff left, Danny, or do I need to raid Janet's private stash?" A glare from the dark-haired women made the blond—another Danny? Great—roll his eyes, but he pushed his glasses up his nose and obediently got up to fetch another pot. "Back in a sec," said O'Neill, and slipped away; damn, but the guy could move quietly for somebody that big.

The loo—okay, _O'Neill—_was doing his best to put their guest at his ease, Danny could tell, but the white-haired halfa had been snowed by professionals; he wasn't buying it; next would come a locked cell or maybe an examination table and straps, he just knew it. On the other hand, Danny _was_ still feeling pretty shaky from his trip through the rabbit-hole or intergalactic sideways toilet or whatever the hell that had been; a little caffeine never hurt. Besides, if he really felt threatened, he could just go intangible and—

--and go where? He turned his coffeecup around in his fingers, trying to ignore the silent stares he was getting and the low-level, continual mutter from Major Carter about the lack of any proof that ghosts existed. Other than the flat statement that he was now in _Colorado_ of all places, Danny hadn't a clue where the hell he was. And Colorado was a long, long way from home—the only place he knew of in Colorado was Plasmius' hunting lodge, and no freaking WAY did he want to be anywhere near _that._

His parents were going to _kill_ him. Aaaack. Maybe hanging out in Colorado wasn't such a bad idea after all, though if the woman with the medical equipment pulled out any needles that might abruptly change. _Better plan on a quick getaway, Danny,_ he thought to himself, and resolved to keep a close watch out for any mention of anal probes.

"Be warned—" The teenager blinked; huh? Tall, Dark and Decorated was still staring at him over his weird sticklike weapon; apparently the guy COULD talk, and he had really cold eyes. At Danny's startled head-jerk, he went on in a low, menacing voice. "Unlike Colonel O'Neill and Daniel Jackson, I am not fooled by your innocent appearance, spirit; my staff is fully capable of disrupting energy fields, and if you show any signs of being a threat I will not hesitate to demonstrate its abilities." A chocolate-brown glare narrowed. "I do not fear you; for I have seen _both_ 'Ghostbuster' movies."

"Uh… right." Wide-eyed, Danny held up open, empty (and hopefully harmless-looking) hands. "Gotcha. No threats." And then again, maybe sticking around Colorado wasn't so good of an idea. _THIS_ guy apparently believed in ghosts just fine, and who knew what his stick could do? It didn't look like anything he'd ever run across before, but then most of the weaponry that had been pointed at him over the last couple of years had had either 'Fenton' on it somewhere or had come from Plasmius' armory or Skulker's suit.

And where was that coffee, anyway? If he was going to have to make a run for it, a little more caffeine in his system wouldn't hurt—

"_**BWEEP!! BWEEP!! System breach!! System breach!! Unauthorized access, incoming travelers—"**_

Had Doctor Frasier's blood-pressure cuff been hooked up to Danny just then, she would have gathered several interesting bits of information, i.e., that halfas can indeed have incipient heart-attacks. Or swallow their tongues, for that matter, when klaxons blare right over their heads… As it was, every person in the room scrambled in rigid attention to their feet (or in Danny's case, to about an inch above the floor) and headed towards the door. The resulting impact of small medical personnel, medium-sized blonde major and extra-large weird-guy-with-forehead-tattoo made a great distraction, and Danny took the opportunity to sink neatly through the floor, ghost sideways, and come out in the hall just beyond the impromptu bottleneck.

Swearing in an unknown tongue erupted behind him from Mister Forehead Tattoo, but the white-haired teenager was too busy backpedaling through the air to the wall; uniformed soldiers poured past like so many khaki lemmings as the klaxons continued to blare. Danny cautiously ghosted back into visibility (no need to waste any more energy than necessary, he might need it) and paused, looking around—and then, in one ear, heard a sudden noise:

_Vwiiiiiiimmm…._

The halfa turned his head left slowly, very slowly, and stared at the sticklike weapon which was now poised about an inch away from his nose. "Oh. Right." Wary dark eyes narrowed once more and Danny smiled weakly. "Uh—no threats here, absolutely none whatsoever, wouldn't hurt a fly…"

"Good. Do not move."

"Wouldn't _dream_ of it." He sighed.

The soldiers continued to thunder past, rifles rattling as the klaxon went off again: **_"BWEEP! BWEEP! Gate anomaly, gate anomaly, alert alert alert alert—"_**

"Now _that's_ a little different than what we usually get," said a voice thoughtfully from Danny's right, and he turned his head again. Colonel O'Neill was also leaning against the wall, hands in pockets. "Most of the time it's just 'intruder alert' or maybe 'incoming traffic'; correct me if I'm wrong, but 'anomaly' sorta equals 'not good', right, Danny?"

The halfa opened his mouth—

"Well, yeah… you could call it that," said Daniel Jackson's voice, equally thoughtful, from just past him. "I mean, the iris has vanished and the wormhole's glowing bright green and swirling…" The overhead lights glinted palely off the man's glasses as he peered around the Colonel. "I don't suppose you'd happen to know anything about that, would you?"

Danny closed his mouth and considered. And he might have _kept_ his mouth closed if he hadn't heard it then, echoing through the hallways:

"**BEWARE!!!"**

_Oh crap…_

_

* * *

To be continued… _

_**Ysabet's Notes:** You know, this was supposed to be a ONE-shot. Gee, I wonder what happened?_


	3. Military Intelligence

**_ChapterThree: Military Intelligence_**

_**By Ysabet**_

_Mmmm, I love the smell of napalm in the morning…_

Of course, the troops currently stampeding, firing, yelling, and otherwise adding to the mayhem and destruction weren't really using napalm, not as such; or so Danny hoped as he watched a large container marked 'T-RATIONS (PACKAGED), 36 CT' fly past and smash all over the floor. The Box Ghost was being a bit more playful than usual today.

"**IIIIIIII AM THE—"**

"Yeah, yeah, yadda yadda yadda, we heard you the first four times, okay?" drawled O'Neill from around a corner as crates and squarish paper products spiraled through the air. "Yoooooouuuu are the Box Ghost, Overlord Of All Things Stackable, the King Of Corrugation, the Paynim Of Packaging, the Shah Of Little Styrofoam Peanuts, the—" He paused, and Danny bit back a snort of laughter despite himself; you could actually _hear_ the gears turning. "—Hey, and if you're the ghost in charge of boxes, are you also the guy who's responsible for when our supply orders go missing?"

"**BEWARE! I-- huh? No, wait, I'm not—"**

"_Get_ 'em, guys!" A handful of angry soldiers, the light of vengeance in their eyes, aimed and fired over the heads of their fellows (who had enough sense and/or training to drop flat in the hallway.) And _this_ time Danny got an up-close-and-personal look at just what some of his new playmates' weirder weaponry could do:

_ZAAAAAAAAAAT!!! ZAT ZAT ZAT!!!_

"**EEEYAGGH!!"**

Unfortunately, the stick-weapons weren't quite enough; the Box Ghost might've been fairly low-level but he recovered quickly, as the hapless soldiers found out in the next few seconds. It was really a pity, thought the white-haired halfa, that the ghost had apparently found this place's main Supply so quick, and that the U.S. Government saw fit to ship so much stuff in bulk on scrapwood pallets…

**_ZAT!ZAT!ZAT!ZAT!—_**

"Aack! Shit!"

"Fire in the hole! You goddamned motherless son of a—"

…and that pallet-wood was so flammable. Smoke was beginning to fill the hallway along with the sounds of coughing; there was a hydraulic _hiss!_ as the sprinkler-system came into play, and from beside Danny a vituperative curse sizzled the air. "Nice," he said appreciatively to the grim face of his current captor. "What's it mean?" Mister Forehead-Tattoo translated for him in some detail, and the halfla whistled. "Wow; didn't know you could DO that with a shovel. Do they teach you that in the military?" Dark eyes glared, but Danny had seen worse and he allowed his shrug to indicate as much. "So—are you gonna let me help, or are we going to keep playing 'Mexican Standoff' while that idiot toasts your recyclables?"

"We can fight our own battles, spirit!" hissed Mister Forehead-Tattoo. "And I am not Mexican!"

"Fine." Danny sighed, crossing his arms and leaning comfortably against the wall, which was now streaming with water. "You like all this mess? Just wait'll you see what this guy can do when he gets hold of some crates of toilet-paper— talk about being in deep sh—"

"Teal'c," said a quiet voice from ankle-level. "Let him help out, okay?" The 'other Danny' guy had prudently found a safe bit of floor behind a thrown crate of office supplies; dusty blond hair spattered with Wite-Out ™ straggled in front of glasses as he peered up through the man-made rain. "The other ghost doesn't seem to like him very much, and we can use the help. Ease up, okay?" The box-fixated specter had used some fairly strong language upon arriving; he seemed more than usually upset for some reason, and he had directed his tirade at Danny.

"But— " Mister Forehead-Tattoo—Teal'c—looked like someone had kicked his puppy. "DanielJackson, is this wise? We have no reason to trust him; why should he not ally himself with his fellow spirit as soon as he is freed? The restless dead are not to be trusted—"

"Hello, right here LISTENING, you know."

"—and according to the tenets quoted by doctors Spengler and Venkmen should be incarcerated at the first opportunity in a—"

"Now wait just one freakin' _minute—"_

The other Danny sighed. "Teal'c? Didn't we have this discussion last month? You know, the one about how fiction is fiction and fact is fact and never the twain shall meet, except in chat-rooms? Let him go, please."

"…….."

Teal'c (Mister Teal'c? Captain Teal'c? Sergeant Teal'c? What kind of name was _'Teal-kuh'_ anyway? Chinese?) looked mulish—but lowered his stick. "Finally," said Danny with an exaggerated roll of his eyes. "Wanna help—'Teal'c', right? C'mon, then, and stick close; you might learn a few things." And he stepped out into the corridor.

The Box Ghost was currently hovering in a corner, glowering at the entire non-ghostish world and making a torrent of—what else?—boxes spin and wheel around him in formation, as if Darth Vader had decided to use cardboard for an invading force instead of Imperial ships. His aura was glowing a vivid, virulent green, and from the expression in his eyes he wasn't about to go quietly—he had a definite mad-on at work there. Maybe he hadn't liked the trip to Colorado much? _That_ was understandable… Who in their right mind would enjoy being flushed down some sort of intergalactic sideways toilet? Yeesh.

As he moved out, from behind him Danny could hear voices calling the soldiers back into defensive positions; good, since there wasn't a lot of space in the corridors. _Standing room only,_ he thought inanely as he slowly walked forward. _Okay, Fenton, what are you gonna do, anyway? No thermos… you could blast Box-Boy into a wall or something, but the less collateral damage the better. Um, what else can you use to contain him in? Or with? I need some sort of energy field stronger than his personal aura, something he can't break through—_

He blinked.

_Oh… Well, it COULD work. _"Hey," he muttered out of the corner of his mouth towards Tall-Dark-And-Tattooed, "that stick-thing you've got there. Energy weapon, you said?"

"Yes."

"Fine. Let's catch this guy before he does any more damage." The Box Ghost was watching them narrowly, his piggy little eyes sharp as needles. "He's not much on the brains and he's not big on the power, but he _can_ make your life hell if he's allowed to roam free." Danny edged a little closer, moving quietly. All around them water from the sprinkler-system continued to rain down. "Look, quick lesson on ghosts… Ghosts are self-contained, self-aware energy-fields, sort of," he said, drawing heavily on his parents' lessons. "It's the 'self-contained' thing that's the kicker. Zapping him, that's only good for a second, but if you surround him with energy all the way around it'll disrupt his field. Ghosts tend to bounce back real quick, but if you can do that even for a minute, he'll be out like a light—"

"For how long, spirit?"

"Long enough for us to think of some way to rig a holding-cell. Or have you got a better idea?" At the other's annoyed grunt, Danny went on in a low voice. "While the sprinklers are still running, if we can keep him solid you can zap him; then when he drops onto the wet floor, zap him again. And again—you can't kill him. The water ought to conduct pretty well… 'Course, you'll want to keep _yourself_ out of the wet too or you'll fry right alongside him. Sound okay?"

"Mmrm. And what will you be doing while I am 'zapping'?"

"Providing a distraction. And keeping him solid; all the zapping in the world won't help if he's not solid. Oh, and…" he gave the large man a wary look. "Be sure you zap the right ghost, okay?" Without waiting for an answer, he drifted up into a slow hover as the soldiers down the hall murmured. "Hey, Crate Creep!" he called out. "I heard a rumor you were dropping the stupid boxes gig and branching out into zip-loc baggies. 'Zat true?"

"**_YOU LIE! I WOULD NEVER ABANDON MY CORRUGATED KINGDOM! I WILL NOT BETRAY MY BELOVED CORNERS FOR PLASTIC FORMLESSNESS!! AND I AM NOT THE CRATE CREEP, I—"_**

--and about then Danny slammed into him. That took them both careening into the nearest patch of ceiling, and the halfa hung on grimly, his own solidity forcing the Box Ghost into form. "Oh—no—you—_don't—"_ he gritted, hammerlocking the beefy, overalled specter, who snarled something rude about duct-tape and sent them sideways through the air into a wall. "Ooof!" And away they went.

Ping-pong ball time; he knew the drill—you hung onto your opponent while they slammed you back and forth through the air in a clumsy aerial version of a drop-down-drag-out ballet, danced indiscriminately along ceilings and walls. And when it was your turn, _you_ slung your partner against the nearest flat surface and attempted to beat them into unconsciousness while they resisted vehemently; it was all part of the choreography.

Sometimes Danny almost envied how the full ghosts were completely dead; they didn't have to deal with healing bruises everywhere for a week after one of these.

Back and forth they went, floor-wall-ceiling-wall-ceiling-floor and back again like demented pinballs; every time they hit the roof, the lights flickered; every time they hit the floor, they splashed. The sprinklers rained continually down, and behind it all came the crackle of the zat-things/sticks/whatevers as they fired—near-misses so far, but getting closer. Shoutings, screams, a flurry of yells-- Who or what was 'nekkid duh' and why were people yelling for them/it?

Bounce, WHAP!! Thud, thwap, WHAM!!! Owww-- and the Box Ghost had been brushing up on his swearing lately, that was for damn sure—

"_Spirit! Release him and move away!!"_ Danny let go and went intangible; his opponent dropped, flailing.

**ZAAAAAAAATZATZATZATZATZAAAAAT!!!!!**

_Ohh… wow…. That has GOTTA hurt….._

The overalled ghost lay in a smoking, steaming heap on the floor, smack in the middle of the corridor's deepest puddle. He groaned, his normal glow flickering fitfully when he tried to sit up, green fire beginning to form around his hands as he raised his head. **"NNGH—I, I WILL WRAP YOU IN B-BIODEGRADABLE CARDBOARD AND FOLD, SPINDLE AND MUTILATE YOU FOR THIS—"**

"_Fire again!"_ shouted Teal'c from his rather improbably perch hanging by one hand from a doorjamb, feet tucked up.

**ZAAAAAAAT!!!!! ZAAAT ZAT ZAT ZAT-ZAT-ZATZATZATZATZAT!!!!!**

"**AAARGH!!!" **_Splash!_

And that… was that.

* * *

"Powdered naquadah?" asked the man named O'Neil carefully, scratching at a sandy hairline. "In a _spray-bottle?"_

"Mixed with water, yes… and a little liquid soap to make it stick," said Major Carter firmly. "It should disrupt his 'field', as you call it—" (she shot Danny a mistrustful look) "—and keep him from changing his state to immateriality, whatever he is."

Leaning back casually against thin air and floating with crossed arms, Danny smirked and rubbed a bruised elbow. "Yeah? For how long? And what's 'nekkid—nakkid—nakkad—"

"Until it's removed. And that information's classified."

They had adjourned to the same side-room as before after a groggy, very solid Box Ghost had been carted away by security to a cell somewhere and sprayed down with some sort of mucky metallic-dust-and-water gunk. _Bet THAT went over great with Boxie. And… I wonder how long it'll take 'em to decide to powder ME with this knock-waddah stuff?_

_…I don't think I want to hang around and find out. But if I leave, they'll be after MY ass with squirt-guns. Do I want that? Nah, don't think so._

With two fingers Danny traced a scrap of his black hazmat suit that had gotten torn during the fight, smoothing it back into place; the edges glimmered and it melded seamlessly with the rest. That always happened; it was one of the perks of being a halfa—things healed quickly, even clothing. It all had to do with that 'field' thing again (and man, was he ever glad that he'd heard his parent's lectures so many times, considering how good he was at tuning them out) and so long as his kept working properly, then he'd be alr—

"I wonder what would happen if we dusted _you_ with naquadah?" mused the white-coated Doctor Frasier thoughtfully, tapping her stethoscope against her palm.

Uh-oh.

Danny glared. "Hey! Did I or did I not just help save you from King Cardboard out there? What, is my

breath that bad?" He crossed one ankle over another, starting to get angry. "I could've just headed off through a wall, or a ceiling or a floor… I could've left you guys to deal with the Box Ghost on your own, and you don't want to know what he's capable of if he gets into Main Supply. Ever had to fight off animated rolls of toilet-paper? Or maybe box-knives and bubble-wrap? Or a hoard of flying tape-dispensers? Those things have TEETH—"

The other Daniel—Jackson, right—frowned. "What's the chance of any more ghosts coming through the Gate? I know we've closed the iris, but it was closed before and opened on its own… twice, actually…"

The halfa shrugged, arms still crossed. "Do I look like a scientist? Dunno."

"What you look like is 'pissed off'," remarked O'Neil's laconic voice from the doorway where he lounged. "And before you think about heading anywhere, maybe you ought to consider that since you got here through the Gate, you'll want to leave through it if you're to get back to wherever the hell you came from. Savvy? So drop the attitude. And Janet?" He turned towards the lab-coated doctor. "No more 'naquadah dust' remarks, okay? Play nice, or I'll tell Hammond where you keep your secret stash of Double-Fudge Choco Wallahs."

Both Janet and Danny glowered at him, simultaneously opening their mouths to reply—

"_BWEEP! BWEEP! Unauthorized activation," _announced a voice calmly over the intercom. _"Gate iris accessed. BWEEP! BWEEP! Gate iris expanding—"_

Absolutely everybody in the room (except for Danny) attempted to exit it at the same time; after the rush had cleared, the halfa looked after them. "I guess it _was_ my breath after all..."

A blond head poked around the doorway. "Are you coming?" asked the other Danny patiently, shoving his glasses back up his nose.

"Uh—"

A hand latched onto his collar. "Great. And on the way you can explain to me just exactly how it is you're a ghost, where you came from," said Daniel Jackson in a determined voice, "and how we can get you back there in one piece. _AND _get the Gate back to normal—"

"Do I have a choice?"

Bright blue eyes blinked once behind lenses. "Four words: Naquadah dust, spray bottle."

"…..You know, I'm really starting to dislike you guys…"

"Yeah, we get that a lot. C'mon, let's get moving."

_To be continued…_


	4. Debriefing

_**Chapter Four: Debriefing**_

_**By Ysabet**_

_**Author's Note the First:**__ Prior to writing this thing, I hadn't seen the end of the series. Now I have seen it, aaaaand, with my fangirl goddesslike powers, I declare this to have happened in an AU wherein the whole damn Phantom Planet plot never happened and his parents still haven't got a clue about what their son's been up to (jeeeeeeze, people!) It's been a few years, Danny and crew are 17 or thereabouts, and it's all business as usual. So there. sticks out tongue at Nickelodeon for daring to cancel the series_

_**Author's Note the Second: **__This chapter is a bribe__. A bribe, I say! To one __**ELLEN BRAND**__, who writes damn good Detective Conan and Danny Phantom fics (not combined, or not exactly, not yet, though one can hope considering that comment that Cade made in the most recent chapter.) Ahem? Hello? Icka M. Chif got me started reading her stuff, and all I can say is that I want to write like that. So… yes; this is a bribe for her to write more, like, oh, a sequel to her most recent Detective Conan thing (Unprofessional Opinion) or maybe to her Danny Phantom stuff, or maybe to both…. feeds EB's plunnies Viagra and donuts as an encouragement I love her stuff. It makes me want to write more. Y'all, if you haven't read it, go and do so NOW, okay? Shoo! Go! What're you waiting around here for? Just go already, would you? You can read this later…_

_**Author's Note the Second-and-a-half:**__ Hi, Icka!! XP Thanks for beta-ing!! (Icka named the chapter, btw. Blame her.)_

Military bases, no matter where they are or what nation they represent, all have the same smell to them. It's faintly grayish, composed of cheap paper, machine-oil, decades of dust, the ever-present funk of human sweat and nameless species of mildew that even the evil khaki-labeled cleaning products approved by governments around the world cannot kill. Variations exist, of course; you wouldn't expect a Foreign Legion outpost in the wilds of the African deserts to reek in the same way that a Panamanian training camp would… but somehow they all end up smelling like God's own locker room.

"Doesn't anybody ever air this place out?" asked Danny, hurrying through industrial gray corridors. "It STINKS in here." He had dropped to his feet rather than remaining airborne; for some reason, the sight of a floating teenager seemed to disturb the military types that they kept passing in the hallways.

"We're kind of far from fresh air," said the other Danny—Doctor Daniel Jackson, some sort of scientist as far as Danny could tell, and apparently the local Voice Of Reason—dryly. He had a nice voice, not as sarcastic as O'Neill's or condescending like a lot of adult voices were. "It's not like we can open the windows on nice days."

"Oh. Where're we going, anyway?" Soldiers rushed past. Man, this place was busy—

Jackson dodged a rifle-toting body ("Sorry sir!") and gave him a Look, then looked heavenward as the intercom blared again:

"_Warning, warning, iris is opening, iris is opening—"_

"Right. Big gray room, giant Space Donut, lots of weapons. Silly me." Danny rubbed at a bruised elbow that the Box Ghost had managed to wham into the wall. "The Box Ghost came through without any trouble; this 'iris' thing—you normally have to open that, right?" Vague mental images of Darth Vader shouting _'Close the blast-doors!'_ filtered through his head, and he frowned as they stomped along at a fast clip, thinking. "What would trigger it to open automatically? --and please don't say 'That's classified', or I'll scream violently and disappear through a wall, okay?"

The other Danny shot him a look that held more than a trace of envy in it. "Wish _**I**_ could do that sometimes," he muttered. "…right. The iris is usually triggered by a transmitting device that our teams carry; if something tries to access it without the right code being transmitted—" With his fist and the flat of his hand, he mimed something that looked remarkably like a fly hitting a windshield. "We don't get a lot of unexpected visitors anymore these days… um, well, not as many as we used to. Not as such. So… how did you trigger it when you came in? And where'd you come from, anyway?"

"From the Ghost Zo—" said Danny automatically, a little distracted—and froze. "…from a sort of, uh… alternate dimension? Not here, but really close to here? And I don't _know_ how I triggered it; one second, business as usual, the next, whoosh." They dodged a clatter of soldiers who were double-timing it gangway down the hall, briefly found themselves flattened side by side against a cold cement wall and Danny glanced sideways to find curious blue eyes examining him. He fought back an urge to melt into the concrete.

Tentative fingers reached out, almost brushing the nearly invisible white glow that always seemed to outline his body; most people didn't really notice it, but _this_ guy… "You're glowing; just barely, but—and It's _cold,"_ said the other Danny, surprised; one eyebrow climbed. "…cold's a more conducive climate for energy than heat, isn't it? Heat's a byproduct of…" the scientist allowed his words to trail off a little apologetically.

Danny rubbed his head; it ached. Would aspirin help a halfa's headache? He hadn't a clue if it would or not. "Of being alive, yeah. Errr… can we leave the whole life-death-afterlife thing 'til later? It kind of makes most ghosts twitch when you talk about it." The last of the soldiers pounded past, big boots clumping, and they fell in line behind them. "My field's mostly built into me, I emit it instead of being held together by it, so it's not as visible as a lot of 'em," he explained. "Boxy, his field keeps his form Boxghost-shaped—what's the word, 'cohesive'?—but I'm a little more on the, um, solid side, so my field's pretty damped down." Or that was how he, Sam and Tucker had worked it out. He _could_ extend his 'glow' when he wanted to, and he _did_ when things got more hairy than usual or when he exerted himself; anytime he did anything that exhausted him afterwards that white glow had been far more visible, shading deeper into green. It had to do with being partially alive, he thought, with having a physical body available to use as a template for his spirit form.

"Solid?" They had arrived at the Temple Of The Giant Space Donut, and Danny hung back just a bit; from the noises emitting over the heads of the mass of uniformed bodies in front of them, he was pretty sure what he was going to see. The small video-screen back in the interrogation-room hadn't done it justice. "And you're more solid because…" If you weren't looking for it, you almost couldn't hear the coaxing subtext in the other-Danny's voice: _Heeeeere, little fishie, take the nice bait…_

Danny stretched on tiptoes, trying to see past a particularly tall military lump; after a moment he gave up and allowed himself to drift vertically just a bit. "It's the whole living-dead thing again," he said absentmindedly, a feeling of dismay creeping along his spine at the sheer volume of the bellowing growl coming from the ramp in front of the donut-thing. "We don't like to talk about it; we're all real sensitive and emo that way—oh man, it IS him," he groaned as a familiar yell split the air:

"—_**I will mount your heads on my WALL if you dare shoot at me again—"**_

"Friend of yours?" asked the other-Danny, also peering; dammit, _he_ didn't have to float—

"Not even," sighed the halfa, covering his eyes with one hand. "Calls himself 'Skulker'. Likes to hunt; big on taking down his targets from behind, sideways, frontways, anyway he can get 'em, and he's not real good at listening to reason…. but I can always give it a try, I guess. You do _not_ want him around, believe me... One sec." Drifting considerably higher, Danny allowed his personal field to expand, making himself light up like the Afterlife's biggest undead firefly. "Yo, Skulker? It's me. We need to—"

"_**GHOST BOY!! I should have KNOWN that this was your doing!" **_**BLAM**

Ducking the virulent green energy-bolt that had nearly taken off his white-haired head, Danny winced and held up placating hands as it impacted on a wall somewhere behind him. "—talk," he finished wearily. "Look, this isn't the kind of situation that can be solved by a fight," he explained to the hulking metal-suited phantom. "I'm in the same boat—oh, do NOT do that ag--!! Dammit, Skulker, _STOP WITH THE SHOOTING, OKAY?!?"_ Two more bolts had just seared their way past, and the halfa danced sideways through space to avoid them. _At least it's not Technus,_ he consoled himself, and belatedly felt a horrific chill at the thought of the technoghost managing to get his spectral hands on all that high-tech government equipment—

**BLAM**

"Aack! STOP, you asshole!" Getting more irritated every second, Danny went skywards (or in the right direction, anyway) and skimmed along the rock and cement overhead, dropping down to the ramp before the other spirit could get another shot off. "Jeeze, do you _ever_ listen? You got pulled through some sort of tunnel, right? Big silvery thing, like being sucked down a toilet drain? Dumped here? Me too, and if you'll just stop being a trigger-happy moron for five seconds—"

"--it will give you time for your mortal friends to aim with more precision? I don't _think_ so, boy," sneered this year's winner of the Mister Uncongeniality Contest, sighting through crosshairs. His aim wavered slightly, and sparks danced along the circuitry of his armor; the trip through the tunnel thing had been much harder on his mechanical casing than on Danny's more ghostly physique... and the effects were visibly accelerating. As a crackle of static danced blue fireworks across one shoulder-mounted gun, the hunter winced and staggered slightly. "Whatever this vile place is, I will not be tricked into—" At that point, with the sound of tiny fireworks going off, one metallic hand fell off onto the ramp, _CLANG!!_

"Aaaargh! What—is _wrong_ with me?"

From where he was pushing through the crowd behind Danny, Jackson muttered: "…aside from having your hair on fire? _WHY_ is his hair on fire? And his goatee? Why the flaming goatee?"

Danny shrugged. Better not to ask.

Electrical snakes of current writhed across Skulker's armor; had he been wearing his more heavily-gunned suit, thought the white-haired halfa, he probably would have been spewing shells and energy-bolts in all directions. Luckily for them, though, he seemed to have gone for a summery stripped-down look today, sort of like a Blackbird SR-71 as opposed to a Panzer tank. The soldiers surrounding them were beginning to mutter and look askance at each other; from their front ranks, O'Neill said casually, "Having a bad day—'Skulker', right? Looks like maybe you could use a hand…"

"Oh, you did NOT just say that," groaned Danny. The man smirked in his direction without removing his eyes from his target, weapon steady. "Of course you did. Look, Skulker? Settle down—lower your power levels, crank back, _something_ like that, whatever—and we'll see if we can help—"

The other ghost, mechanized teeth gritted, staggered back a few paces. "I—think—_**not**__,"_ he hissed, clutching at where his ribs would have been had he been flesh and blood. One finger came unhinged with a miniscule pop and dangled, wires sparking. "I will not—_aagh!_—throw myself on s-something as—doubtful as your mercy—" And with one desperate, almost-awkward leap, the armored specter threw himself backwards—

--into the Gate, which still glowed vibrant silver. As he vanished into the mercury-bright pool, it momentarily shimmered green; "I w-will seek _you_ out—_later_—halfa!" he growled before the rippling light took him. With a sliding _CLANG!!!_ the thing that they called an 'iris' closed over it all and the hum of energy died to nothing.

Silence; even the soldiers were still.

…and then, quite prosaically, Major Carter stepped forward and began spraying the iris with her trusty naquada-dust-laced water gun, _spritz! spritz! spritz! spritz! _for all the world like a rather militant housewife misting her plants against aphids.

The soldiers relaxed. O'Neil shook his head. "Well, _that_ was weird."

And Daniel Jackson turned a blue gaze towards Danny once more. "So," he said brightly, "what's a 'halfa'?"

Danny groaned again.

_Later..._

More coffee, this time in a more congenial (if messier) location, the lab of one Doctor Daniel Jackson. Following the old 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend' chestnut, Danny (Fenton, one each) found that he had acquired a certain amount of guarded trust; hence the coffee and lack of naquadah-laced shackles.

_Man, if that stuff about caffeine stunting your growth is actually true, I'm in a lot of trouble,_ mused the white-haired phantom, swirling the dark liquid around in his cup before drinking. Of course, considering the nightmare sludge that he and Tuck had been drinking for the past couple of years-- if the effects had been retroactive, by now they would both have shrunken down to the size of Skulker's actual shriveled form. And speaking of which... "--no, no idea why his hair's on fire," answered Danny a little belatedly to the question that he had just been asked. "I mean, it's just always been like that. Saves on haircuts, I guess..." He snorted. "Seems to be sort of common among the more powerful spirits, really; there's this one woman with a flaming pony-tail-- kind of cool, really, but it must be hell to sleep in." He took a deep swallow.

Skulker was gone; the Box Ghost was currently languishing in a cell or something somewhere; he had coffee, and nobody was pointing a gun at him at the moment. It was all good, except for--

"I don't s'pose you feel ready to tell us about how and why you ended up here in the first place, do you?"

--except for the oversized khaki fly in the ointment, sitting to his left. _Siiiiigh..._ "I was shoving another ghost out of my territory back through a portal into the Z-- where we come from; he put up a fight, there was sort of a, I dunno, a lightning storm? And we both got sucked in through the portal, which was _not_ acting like normal." The halfa gave a one-shouldered shrug. "Called himself, um, Univaco-something, had this thing for computer parts; I had to kick his butt out of the local Radio Shack's parts storage warehouse. Item-obsessed ghost for sure; those can be a pain." At O'Neill's blank look, Danny sighed again. "See, it's like this--"

(Beside him, Jackson had opened his mouth to expound on the subject; after a second he closed it, looking a little bemused.)

"--there's a couple of different categories of ghosts; you can tell 'em apart by the colors of their fields," said the halfa, warming to the subject. It was nice-- it was _more_ than nice-- to have people actually paying attention to him without threats, screams, energy weapons or pain involved. Bit of a novelty too. "Item-obsessed spirits are like the Box Ghost; they have a kind of mania for one particular thing, they get their strength from associating with that thing and they can get really goofy over them." He held out his mug for a refill; a fascinated Jackson obliged. "Possessive spirits are another type, a nasty one; they leech energy from who or whatever they possess. Hard to get rid of; I hate those. And..." Danny frowned. "...then there's place-bound spirits; they're tied to, well, _places,_ duhh. They get their strength from locations, sometimes in this plane or sometimes elsewhere. Very protective types."

"And the glows? You said something about colors--"

Danny shifted a little uncomfortably. "Yeah... Item-obsessed ghosts have blue fields, possessive spirits glow red, and place-bound spirits are green." There was a short silence; from the cluttered office's corner, Mister Forehead-Tattoo-- Teal'c-- grunted softly. "What? So I'm sort of tied to my home, so what? No big deal; I can handle being away for a little while." He looked away, staring down into his coffee-cup again. And he could handle it, it didn't normally bother him at all to be away from Amity Park. Except--

It hadn't really started until maybe a year past; he'd noticed it on one of his parents' interminable 'family vacations' after he'd been Phantom for, what? about eighteen months? A kind of... itch; a kind of uncomfortable, nagging, _pulling_ feeling, not enough to really hurt or anything. It had been a puzzle; then it had become an annoyance. But after three days or so, it had graduated from 'pain in the ass' to 'I think I'm gonna be sick', and then one night Danny had woken up to find himself in mid-air, white-haired and nearly a quarter of the way home.

People shouldn't fly in their sleep. He had nearly gone straight through a mountain. Finding his way back to his family's campsite hadn't been much fun, either.

Fortunately their trip had ended prematurely with a call from one of his mom's old friends about a troublesome haunting in their home state, so... it hadn't become an issue. But it _could_ have, and he knew it. Afterwards, he, Tucker, Sam and Jazz had spent more than a few nights hammering out the problem, and Danny was less than comfortable with the conclusions that they had come to. The idea that he was any kind of 'obsessed' spirit was a little hard to take, but as soon as he had gotten back into the Amity Park area and _in particular_ near the lab... Danny had been able to feel it, a tingling, reassuring strength flowing into him even as he took the stairs to the lab at a fast clip; the closer he had gotten to the portal-- to the place where he had 'died' originally-- the better he had felt.

Jazz had discovered him curled up in front of the portal downstairs, one hand clutching the edge like a child with a favorite teddy-bear. Their parents, fortunately, had been too busy with unpacking to pay much attention.

Afterwards the two siblings had talked quietly about how ghosts, traditional non-laser-shooting dead-people ghosts, supposedly hung around the scenes of their lives-- and deaths. A death punched a small, personal hole into the Ghost Zone, allowing energy to filter through into the living world in a tiny stream; that free-floating energy was available everywhere in the Zone to be soaked up by ectoplasmic entities, like sunlight by plants. Everything the existed needed energy to continue existing, which explained why spirits stayed where they did unless they found other ways of supplementing their energy-- possession, for instance. Or they became like Skulker, without a place in the living world, dwelling permanently in the Zone and only leaving for 'hunting trips'.

People who didn't have reasons to hang around supposedly went on past the Zone to wherever regular dead people went, but the ones who got snagged by their own psyches, hang-ups, traumas... _obsessions_... became _ghosts._

That was how it worked, so far as they could tell. And... beyond that? Who knew?

...and ...this was getting him absolutely freaking nowhere. Danny looked up from the floaty swirl of cream on the surface of his coffee to several interested stares and a whole lot of silence. "You okay, kid?" That was O'Neill again, both big hands curled around his own mug, sharp eyes fixed on Danny's hunched-over slump. "You look like somebody's dog ate your homework. How old _are_ you, anyway?"

Danny Fenton-- Danny _Phantom_-- glared at the older man; interrogation time again, jeeeeze... "You want that in human years or ghost years? How long since I was born, or how long since I got this way?" He took another swallow and grimaced; it was growing cold-- coffee always cooled quicker when he held it in his spectrally-cold hands, gloved or not. "Sorry," he muttered. "Touchy subject." One he had hoped to avoid, actually.

...and maybe it was the fatigue-factor finally clamping down, maybe it was the bruises of his fight with the Box Ghost aching, maybe it was the effects of distance at last settling into his ghostly bones: but he was suddenly so _sick_ of all this. For one blinding moment, all Danny could feel was an overwhelming desire for **home**.

Unaware of this, Jackson cleared his throat and settled back with his own mug. "As I understand it from what research I've seen published on captured ectoplasmic entities," he said carefully, "most of them seem to suffer a kind of withdrawal and weakening after being separated from their energy sources for prolonged periods of time; it's a little like starving would be for a normal human. Is this-- is being away from your home area going to be a problem for you?"

Silence.

And at last, Danny sighed. He didn't want to do this, but... "No. 'Cause I'm heading back, right now. Thanks for the hospitality, but it's time I was out of here and back home; I think I'm gonna have enough problems there to take care of to last me the next century, if things are as weird there as they are here." Draining the last of his coffee, he stood and placed the cup on the edge of Jackson's cluttered desk. "You can chuck Boxy back through the gate if you want; me, I'll find my own way out. No offense, but I've seen plenty of movies; and I think I'd better make tracks now before you decide I've seen too much and can't be allowed to... leave or... something..."

Oh man. The looks he was getting, from O'Neill and that Teal'c guy--

O'Neill rose to his feet, sitting his cup on the same desk; even leaning back on his elbows against a bookshelf, the guy looked way more intimidating than Danny was happy with. "'Fraid we can't allow that, kid. First off," and he began ticking points one at a time on his fingers, "I don't care how long you've been around-- 'til I get reason to treat you otherwise, you're still a minor. Second, we need more info from you, like how the _hell_ that Skulker guy got back through the Gate-- that's not s'posed to happen, it's a one-way deal-- and... other stuff." From the way his eyes narrowed, 'other stuff' had some importance to it. He held up another finger and tapped it. "Third, you're a civilian in a highly-classified area, and you ain't goin' NOplace until I say so. Flat. That's it. Fourth-- seems like you might have a problem of your own here-- HEY!!"

That... O'Neill's litany of Thou Shalts-- was the last straw. The grey-haired officer's indignant shout followed Danny's fuming fade into invisibility. So they wanted to keep hold of him? _Let's see them try,_ he sniped to himself as he slipped soundlessly from the chair and made a sideways dive through the nearest wall.

_This place can't be THAT big. I'll just keep going 'til I hit the outer wall, scout around, find a map someplace-- there's got to be a gas station around, there are gas stations everywhere-- and figure out how to get home from there... _And so he kept flying. Rooms whipped past; soldiers, equipment, a really amazing amount of dorms and bunks (he was moving too fast to make out details, but they were clear enough), more equipment, some sort of huge motor-pool, even more dorms... and then blackness.

Lots and lots and lots of blackness. SOLID blackness, very much literally. Were they underground? He angled his 'flight' up.

More blackness. More, and more, and more, and more, and more--

_Where the hell ARE we? Well, fine, they want to play it that way? Jerks._ He paused for a moment, then angled again; it was almost impossible to tell precisely if he was pointing straight up, but it ought to be a pretty near thing. _Good, let's get the hell out of here,_ he thought, grinning unseen in the unrelenting darkness, and poured on the speed.

It took forever.

Blackness and blackness and blackness and-- _JEEEEZE, how deep are we?!?_-- and blackness and more blackness and more and more and moreandmoreandmoreandmore-- _Am I even flying the right direction? What if I get lost? What if I angled too hard and I'm flying straight down? Oh shut UP--_ and it was thick and unrelenting and just black black black, and he couldn't even tell if he was moving or not, there was no air to riffle past, no feeling of friction or momentum or resistance, just blackness blackness BLACK--

--and _**light**_

He screeched (figuratively) to a stop, eyes tearing up almost instantly. When he could see again, they widened.

Standing on one foot in front of him was a-- Marine? His tattoo said 'SEMPER FI', so probably-- without a shirt. He was on only one foot, because not only was he without a shirt, he was without _anything_ in the way of clothes except for the jockey-shorts that he was currently maneuvering his other foot through. And according to his horrified expression, Danny had at some point during his little trip dropped the invisibility.

"EEAAAAGH!! JESUSCHRIST!!"The Marine screamed like a little girl and toppled over, naked extremities flailing; Danny yelped and backpedaled into darkness again--

_--aaagh!--_ and then forward once more, this time to streak past the hapless soldier ("Sorry! Sorry!"), through a door, and _RIGHT_ through a number of other rooms which happened to also be full of half-naked clothes-changing men... and women... whoah...

Screams and shouts followed in his wake like auditory turbulence; hand over his eyes but peering between fingers, the panicked halfa streaked (so to speak) down the first clear hallway he reached, shot through a thick wall into a space that did _not_ have naked military types in it, braked, and dropped to the floor in a nerveless heap.

_**GNNNGH...**_

_Okay. Okay. Right. Just going to stay here for a while. Not moving, not moving, not going anywhere... What the #$!! was all THAT, for crying out loud? Must've been some sort of-- shift change? Looked like the gym locker room back at Caspar High, only with actual muscles... and, uh, co-ed... which I did NOT look at, nuhuh, noway nosir... um. Much... _

He raised his head very, very slowly, just in case there were naked Marines in hiding nearby; but nothing jumped out, thank God. Mops, buckets, a broom, shelves opposite him on a wall barely five feet away; lots of cleaning-products up there, most of them with O.D. green labels... A janitor's closet. A wonderful, wonderful, janitor's closet that somebody had left the light on in; Danny closed his eyes in utter and complete thankfulness.

As exhaustion filtered in to replace whatever a halfa's body used for adrenalin, he settled down between two buckets and an industrial-strength jug of bleach, white head cradled in his hands. Wherever he was... whatever this place was, it was too. Damned. BIG. He couldn't just go zooming off in any direction-- even heading straight up seemed to have problems. What if he ended up flying right through that Gate thing? Who knew what it'd do to him? What if he ended up trying to pass through some of that 'naquadah' stuff? Or, and this was a _really_ horrifying thought, he found himself inside _O'Neill's_ room during a shift-change? Or Mister Forehead-Tattoo's?

It didn't help that he was feeling like shit by now, either. Being this far away from the Zone and Amity Park WAS starting-- hell, had started a while ago-- to tell on his endurance. Staying in ghost-form might have been safest, but it probably wasn't smartest. God, he was tired.

So-- (Danny shifted a mop and two brooms to make way for his feet; the bare overhead bulb with its pull-chain flickered fitfully) --so what were his options? Unconsciously mimicking O'Neill from earlier, he began to tick them off on one hand...

_One: I can stay right here and rest up. Problem with __that__ is that I'm running out of energy and it's not gonna get any better. Two: I can drag my sorry ass back to O'Neill and Jackson and that Teal'c badass, and while I've seen worse, I think I've spent enough time drinking their coffee for today, thanks. Three: I can sneak down to that Gate thing and see if I can get it to open later. Problem there? That 'iris'. Unless I take a giant squeegee to it, it's covered with Naquadah-dust courtesy of the Mad Doctor and her Spritzer Of Doom. And I don't know how to open it. And at least one ghost that I know of, that Univacosaur that started the whole mess, went SPLAT against it when he followed me. So-- no, not good. Aaaaand... Four? Four, right: I can sneak around a bit, try to gather up a little more info, and stay Danny Fenton as much as possible. The more I'm Fenton, the less energy I'll use; it won't stop the drain, but it'll slow it down at least._

_Okay. Option Four it is._

_...I wonder if anybody's figured out that I'm missing yet? Bet Sam and Tuck have; they must be tearing their hair out back home. How long have I been here, anyway? Flying... that felt like it went on for ages, but I bet it wasn't all that long. A few hours for the med-exam-and-interrogation, a half hour fighting Boxy, then a little more time for Skulker, then a little __more__ for coffee-in-the-other-Danny's-office, and then the flying... no, not all that long. But-- how long did it take me to go through that damned tunnel-thing? I have NO idea; could've been instantaneous, could've taken days..._

_I need a newspaper. Or a TV. Or somebody who can answer questions. Or some Tylenol._

_So tired..._

_The Box Ghost, he's somewhere here, but he'd be worse than useless. O'Neill'd stick my ectoplasmic butt in some sort of kryptonite-, I mean naquadah-jail... and that Teal'c guy'd do the same thing, only he'd mace me first. Other-Danny, Jackson... he wasn't so bad, but holy freaking hell, he asks a lot of questions! Makes good coffee, though. Seems kinda nice, too, when he's not going 'whyyyyyy' at me._

Distance dragged at him, intensifying the ache in bruises, the heaviness of gravity. Danny yawned; his eyes slid closed.

_It was about seven p.m. when I got sucked in through the Portal, right? If the trip WAS instantaneous or close to it, it's gotta be... dunno. Tired; can't think. ...sometime between midnight and dawn, if we're still even close to the same time-zone. Oh, wait, didn't they say we're in Colorado? What time is it in Colorado? Hell, what time is it in Amity Park?_

_Can't think. Maybe if I took a nap, could think better. Maybe..._

Around and around in his slightly battered skull the thoughts went, circling like Plasmius' vultures. Danny's breathing slowed, deepened; gradually he slid a little lower against the wall.

_...if it was around midnight there, then... Colorado's an hour behind, so... but if that damned tunnel took more than... _

_Tired. So tired. Man, hope Sam and Tuck don't freak out too badly when don't show up f'r school... sorry, guys..._

_So tired. Tired. S'rry—Jus' little nap--_

A breath; another, in and out and slow with sleep. Two foggy, glowing rings of light skated across and around the teenager's form, and when they faded the white hair had darkened and the thin, pale glow that always edged his skin had vanished...

...and Danny _Fenton_ slept the sleep of the justifiably exhausted, far from home in a janitor's closet more than twenty stories underground. For a little while, at least.

Overhead, without any fuss, the light-bulb burned out.

_**Author's Note the Third:**__ Next time... the plot not only thickens, it widens, deepens, and develops a distressing need to go on a diet. Sorry this one took so long._

_**Author's Note the Fourth**__: Well? Did you go read Ellen Brand's stuff first? If you didn't, why the hell not? Go, go. makes shooing-chickens motions with hands Some people, I swear._


End file.
